2. It is not Islam or Eman [Arabic: īmān] to deify Muhammad or to represent him to be akin to God, as sometimes some Moulvies represent him and call him "the One (Ahad) in the guise of Ahmad[40]." Our Prophet himself never claimed that he was anything more than a mere man. Indeed, he taught us all to say [Arabic: Ash-hadu allā ilāha illallāh, wa Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan rasūlullāh] that he was but "a servant and messenger of God." The only thing he ever claimed for himself was that God had chosen him to be a messenger [Arabic: rasūl = payghambar] to convey His messages to men. "That an immense mass of fable and silly legend," says Rodwell, "has been built up upon the basis of the Qur'an, is beyond a doubt; but for this Muhammad is not answerable,[41] any more than he is for the wild and bloodthirsty excesses of his followers in after ages." 3. God's messages which Muhammad delivered to men were all collected soon after his death and are preserved intact in a remarkable book called the QUR'AN--a book which has lived through no less than thirteen centuries without undergoing the least alteration in a single word or even a dot! The difference in the messages contained in the Qur'an and the ordinary sayings of the Prophet reported in books on Hadis [Arabic: hadith] is simply this:--that when delivering God's messages Muhammad himself felt, and those who were in his company witnessed, that he was inspired by some divine energy or power which impelled him to say what he said; whereas at other times, when he was talking like an ordinary man, no signs of divine energy or inspiration were visible. It will carry me too far if I endeavour to explain here the real nature of "the divine inspiration" under which he delivered what he and others believed to be "divine messages". You will understand it if you read such books as Professor James's _Varieties of Religious Experience_. Let us, like good Momins, take it as a _fact_, what our Prophet's intimate companions [Arabic: ṣḥābah] vouched, that he appeared to be quite a different man when he uttered such messages. Their style or matter itself even to this day proves to all unbiassed minds that they are no ordinary sayings of an ordinary man. There is something unique in them which we can only feel but cannot define or express in words. Even historians and biographers like Gibbon and Muir and translators like Rodwell, Palmer and Lane-Poole are obliged, in spite of themselves, to admit and admire, what some of them call, the rugged grandeur and eloquence of the Qur'an. Even Sale says that some passages are really sublime.